Jacques Cousteau, Oceans' Impresario, Dies

By GERALD JONAS

Published: June 26, 1997

Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the French oceanographer who opened more of the Earth's surface to human endeavor than any other explorer, died yesterday at his home in Paris. He was 87.

Mr. Cousteau, who held no scientific degree, became a household name in many parts of the world through the enormously popular books, films and television programs that documented over four decades of undersea explorations.

His first book, ''The Silent World,'' sold more than five million copies in 22 languages. A film of the same name, with the young Louis Malle as one of the underwater photographers, won an Academy Award for best documentary in 1957, the first of three Oscars that Mr. Cousteau's films received. Television programs bearing the Cousteau name earned 10 Emmys and many other awards.

Explaining the broad appeal of his work, Mr. Cousteau once said: ''We are not documentary. We are adventure films.''

Mr. Cousteau's adventurous spirit and mastery of the media brought him fame and fortune, but it also drew the envy of more conventional oceanographers, some of whom questioned the scientific value of his research, the authenticity of his film footage and even his record as a pioneering environmentalist.

His later years were clouded by family quarrels over the direction of the far-flung Cousteau enterprises, which ranged from the nonprofit Cousteau Society and related organizations, with more than 300,000 members in Europe and the United States, to the Cousteau Oceanic Park, a theme park near Paris that filed for bankruptcy in 1991.

His detractors notwithstanding, Mr. Cousteau's reputation rests on an achievement of unassailable importance: He was the co-inventor and principal developer of the Aqua-lung, better known by the acronym ''scuba,'' for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.

Before Mr. Cousteau, the only options available for undersea exploration were the diving bell and the helmeted diving suit, expensive and burdensome equipment that severely restricted the range of an explorer's movements. Scuba gear set divers free to explore, to depths of 100 feet and beyond, the seas that cover more than three-fifths of the Earth's surface.

Mr. Cousteau's other accomplishments resist pigeonholing. His triumphs were essentially triumphs of character. To every task, he brought relentless energy, unquenchable curiosity, unshakable faith in himself, irresistible charm and the ability to get others to share his enthusiasms. The motto of his ship the Calypso in its glory days in the 1950's was his lifelong credo: ''Il faut aller voir.'' (''We must go and see for ourselves.'')

President Jacques Chirac of France paid tribute to Mr. Cousteau yesterday as ''an enchanter,'' saying he represented ''the defense of nature, modern adventure'' and ''the dreamy part at the heart of all of us.''

In announcing the death, the Cousteau Foundation said, ''Jacques-Yves Cousteau has rejoined the Silent World.''

Mr. Cousteau's son Jean-Michel, who had argued with him in recent years, said: ''The work of my father was a hymn to life. On the wall of my office there is a quotation from my father: 'The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.' ''

Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, said: ''The ocean environment has lost its greatest champion. He was the Rachel Carson of the oceans.''

John C. Mutter, director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, said Mr. Cousteau, through his writing and television programs, had inspired an entire generation of young scientists to become oceanographers. He said Mr. Cousteau would be remembered not so much for his research but as ''a popularizer of genius,'' who set firmly in the public mind the fundamental importance of the world's oceans to the fate of the planet.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born on June 11, 1910, in the prosperous market town of St.-Andre-de-Cubzac near Bordeaux, France, the son of Daniel and Elizabeth Cousteau. His father, a legal adviser and traveling companion to a peripatetic American millionaire, kept his family on the go. Jacques's introduction to the sea came at the fashionable resort of Deauville; although he was a sickly, anemic child, he learned to swim at age 4, a rare accomplishment in that era.

''I loved touching water,'' he wrote later. ''Physically. Sensually. Water fascinated me.'' As he outgrew his childhood ailments, he set his mind on becoming a naval officer.

Stick-Ball in Manhattan, Film-making in France

After World War I his father's new employer, another American millionaire with a taste for travel, took the family to the United States for two years. Jacques and his older brother, Pierre, played stickball on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and attended summer camp in Vermont, where Jacques learned to hold his breath and dive to the murky bottom of a lake.

Back in France, he saved his allowance to buy an early Pathe movie camera. Before shooting his first film, at age 13, he took the camera apart and put it back together to find out how it worked. The homemade melodramas he filmed with his friends always credited ''J. Cousteau'' as producer, director and chief cameraman.